Speech Impediment

Speech Impediment
I should begin by telling you that I have a serious fear of public speaking. My palms get clammy, my voice waivers, my eyes get fuzzy, and my stomach lurches whenever I get up in front of a crowd. If it is a particularly large crowd I start to cry. It was my freshman year in college and one of the GE’s that I had to take was speech 101. How exciting for me, I was so terrified of it that I actually dropped the class first quarter, deciding that maybe later on I would be more brave.
Well, second quarter rolled around and I started it off with zero credits. The wonderful budget cuts going on by the state of California made getting classes difficult. Eventually I gathered 12 credits, but I needed more, so I reluctantly added the only open spot left for speech 101. My teacher was nice, the class size was small, and the book was less of a joke than my first one… so I felt a bit better this time round. Well, we started off with an explanatory speech, I practiced till I was blue in the face and when I gave it my face was more of an olive color. Either way, I gave my speech and actually did well. After delivering I had to put my head on my desk and breath slowly so I wouldn’t share my lunch with the classmate next to me. The semester went by, and as with anything, practice makes perfect. I still got ill, but I could handle it.
During the last weeks of class our teacher said that there was to be a persuasive speech competition. If one of us won, she would give that student an automatic A in the class. I decided it sounded pretty sweet, so I entered in. My speech was on reality TV and all the evils I felt went along with it. I wrote a good speech, I just needed help with the delivery.
Anyway…I’ll have you know that this competition was rather large, it was for all the students in speech 101. That means it could include even super seniors! Overall there were about 200 people in this competition. We all showed up on a very rainy evening and were assigned into groups. There were three rounds to make it through, then the finals. I delivered my speech as well as I could in round one, received a bit of criticism in round two, and kind of choked in round three. I took comfort in realizing that my material trumped most of the other students. Eventually all 200 of us reconvened into an amphitheater type room to hear the finalists. I was sitting with my friends chatting as they called out the names, I didn’t need to listen, there was no way I had made it.
My friend turned to me wide eyed and her mouth dropped a bit. I was kind of confused until they announced my name again. My palms broke out in a sweat, my stomach turned and my head began to pound. They couldn’t be serious! I had to give my speech in front of all 200 students and the judges! I fearfully took my seat next to the other two finalists. I was the second to go up. I started out over my crowd and froze! The judges started at me, I stared back. I started to panic, if only I could just get my first line out! “Imagine you are living in the year 90 CE, sweat dripping from you brow, and blood dripping from your sword….” Yes, I had done it, everything else began to follow. I triumphantly finished by challenging my crowd to think twice about what they called entertainment and took my seat.
I sat nervously as the judges discussed the scores, “The second runner up is….the first runner up is…..the winner of the 2004 speech competition is Meghan Nielsen”. I was so excited, I rose to accept my trophy, take a few pictures, and skipped off towards home. It was a great experience and I am so glad that I was able to get over my fear of public speaking, well, at least back then :).